The Thanksgiving holiday week is coming to a close, with North Carolinians on the roads and in the air returning home Sunday and Monday. Officials at Charlotte Douglas Airport say they expect peak crowds the next two days, with more than 26,000 travelers departing daily for return trips home, as well as many arrivals. That’s approaching the airport's daily traffic record, on the day after the Democratic National Convention in September 2012, when 29,000 people departed from Charlotte.

The City of Charlotte has asked the Federal Aviation Administration to decide who will run Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The letter comes weeks after a judge ruled in the city’s favor that a state-created commission does not have authority to take control of the airport, unless the FAA approves it.

Charlotte’s city council has run the airport for 78 years.

City attorney Bob Hagemann says the city wants a final answer.

“There has been a cloud over the airport going on two years. We think it’s time to work hard to remove that cloud,” says Hagemann.

A North Carolina judge has ruled that the Charlotte City Council may continue managing Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. The decision comes after 16 months of wrangling between city officials and state lawmakers over who will control the airport. Nevertheless, the victory is not final.

The State of North Carolina faced off against the City of Charlotte in court today, once again, about who should control Charlotte-Douglas airport. A decision in the more-than-a-year-long case is imminent.

Charlotte-Douglas airport’s calling card has long been low cost for airlines. CLT is the cheapest of the nation’s 25 largest airports for airlines to drop or collect passengers. The airport moves more passengers using less space than any other, and employs less than half the average number of employees. But, according to reports released today, that thriftiness is creating its own costs: mishandled contracts and payments from a lack of oversight.

The Charlotte city council met behind closed doors Monday night with its lawyers to discuss, once again, the ongoing lawsuit against state lawmakers and the airport commission they created to take control of Charlotte Douglas. The council will continue the suit, despite another, recent state law intended to stop it.

Twenty years ago Thursday, a USAir jet crashed near Charlotte-Douglas airport, killing 37 of the 52 passengers aboard. Flight 1016 was arriving in Charlotte on a flight from Columbia, SC, on the evening of July 2, 1994. All five crew members survived the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board's investigation concluded that the plane flew into a "wind-shear," produced by a rapidly-developing thunderstorm near the airport.